First there is Onyxia. Okay, I'm convinced on this one. It could have used some serious trimming and not-having-to-find-Rexxaring. And that stuff in BRD that the ALliance had to do which I have apparently suppressed. Either that or I recognized that I players at 60 ran BRD a lot anyway so it's not as if it is some terrible burden to have an attunement that relies on running BRD. Still, the Onyxia attunement took the "fly to random places, and then back to them again" tactic a bit too far.

Then there is the entire Burning Crusade expansion. That one I can accept. Needing every single person to do a particular, and not particularly short chain to get into Kara was a bit much. Needing one person (as it was changed to just be a gate that needed unlocking), not so much. Beside that, the instances were all places that people were going to anyway, since they needed that gear. Unfortunately, that's the extent to which I can claim that the BC attunements were not completely ridiculous. I'm looking at you, every single other raid.

My theory is that BC was intentionally designed this way to be a real strawman extremist as a way to justify going to the opposite extreme. It's a tactic we use in politics: accuse your opponent of being the ridiculous extreme in order to justify going to your own extreme. In the case of Blizzard, someone who hated attunements turned an entire expansion into an argument against them. Note that when I say this is "my theory" what I really mean is "here's a ridiculously insane theory that I doubt is true and yet still insist on taking credit for."

After that we have heroic raids. At that point I don't care. Let players go in at level one or make them do a six-month round of dailies, as a guild. I don't care either way. It's sort of like how when you're trying to get into the Olympics they can force you to spend a week in a cave with no light or food. It sucks, but it's only my fault that I couldn't make it past the third day and it's the Olympics, so they get to make the rules.

Now it's time for the part where I copy out words and insult them.

"Progression raiders do that anyway. You ran BWD and Bastion, then ran Firelands, and finally ran Dragon Soul. You progressed, mastered the content, moved on. All that attunements did was force your raiding guild to take a night
off and run older content again. We have a new healing paladin joining,
he's done everything but Kael'thas because his last guild just couldn't
hack it"

Yes, they do, which suggests that they should already have that done. Oh, but our poor guy is stuck in a guild that can't kill Kael'thas and has to hop up to a better one that is entirely done with Tempest Keep. Well fuck that guy. If there is a mechanic that reduces the habit of entitled jerks from hopping a guild the moment it slows down to join one that is further ahead, great. Add more of that.

"In fact, I never did a single attunement chain in either vanilla or The Burning Crusade that wasn't pointlessly long, full of extraneous steps, or just plain tedious."

Really? I can't beleive you never did the attunements for BWL or MC. You know them, the attunements which consisted of "talk to someone" or "loot something and read it" followed by running the instances that you'd be running at that level anyway. Given that MC is right next to BRD, even if this was somehow something you'd never done, getting players attuned was not a big deal: the portal was a short run away and after that, a few trash packs and some lava swimming are all that stand in the way of the attunement. The BWL attunement took longer, but given that the quest ended six inches from the tail of the last boss, it wasn't out of the way of someone who had run UBRS once.

"There are the people who just plain don't want the hoi polloi in their
heroic raids and will welcome anything that keeps players out to inflate
their own sense of accomplishment."

Right, because those inconvenient but entirely-doable and not skill-related quests are such a great barrier. Also, who the fuck is doing heroic raids where the "hoi polloi" are just wandering in? Do they not run with guilds, somehow being the sort of elitist who is inclusive enough for a PUG but not inclusive enough for a PUG? Sorry, but you seem to be making up imaginary people.

"unduly hinder that really excellent rogue who blasts out tons of DPS but has to go to her kid's piano recital"

There is nothing I hate more than musically-talented roguelings. That is clearly it. You got me.

"Another group seem to believe that the attunement process creates bonds
between players and promotes unity. In my experience, it just ended up
ticking people off who had to run Steam Vaults again to get
Dave's priest attuned for the alt run or forcing us to spend a raid
night getting the new feral attuned to Hyjal instead of running Black
Temple. They didn't foster a sense of group unity; they hampered it."

If your sense of unity was wrecked by having to help a group member, then you're some pretty disunited people. Next time, recruit people who have done an instance before and stop poaching from lower-ranked guilds. The people you get doing that aren't known for their team spirit.

"As for the lore aspect of attunements, I won't lie -- that's valid to
some extent. It was usually buried under lots of pointless busywork, but
it was there. I did love watching Windsor clean house in Stormwind. I
did enjoy some of the AQ opening. Seeing the last of the Highborne
inside Naxxramas the first time we zoned in was cool."

None of these are necessarily part of attunements, so they are irrelevant except to the extent that adding them to attunements increases the likelihood that players will see them.

"But ultimately, a lot of these moments were seriously delayed
gratification and were at a cost that just shouldn't have been paid.
Making cool lore stuff part of a mandatory gateway just takes the shine
off of the cool lore, because you're so focused on burning through the
attunement as fast as possible you can't take the time to pay attention
to it anyway, especially if you have four or more other people there who
did it already and are just carrying you through it as fast as possible
to get you ready for the raid."

Delayed gratification tends to be the only one there is in these sorts of games. Beside a few bits of scenery porn, games don't lend themselves to gratification that is quickly or easily gotten. There must be some barrier, because as in life, it is usually the anticipation that is the greatest. Scientists proved this with people, and of course monkeys too, because that's the purpose of monkeys: science and strange arguments against evolution. This barrier could be based on skill, time, or I suppose heredity or money. I'm guessing those last two would be rather unpopular, though one could argue that money is a barrier if we're not pirating all our games (I'm not, for the record). That leaves time or skill. Time is clearly the hated one here, because it delays the efforts of amazing rogues with children who play the piano. Yet it is the skill one which would truly keep people out, particularly the hoi polloi.

There could of course be no barriers at all to any content, so roll up your character and teleport to Deathwing. With your 24 friends who you magically found despite having played none of the rest of the game. There is no time, skill, genetic, or money barrier to fighting Deathwing, but I suspect having heroic Deathwing kill you over and over again isn't the best way to start a game.

Since the name of the game seems to be hyperbolic accusations against imaginary people, I'm going to say that only ghost Communists would want to remove attunements, claiming they are a tool of the oppression of the bourgeoisie. And ghosts love pianos.

26
comments:

Loved this response, lol. Sarcasm perfect and point clear. These people who write stuff like this haven't the slightest idea why there are 9 mil still playing this game. Hint: It came on the back of the vanilla and TBC gameplay and we've seen nothing but decreased membership since Blizz has changed all those "awful" things.

These people haven't the slightest idea what made this game a smash hit.

You know them, the attunements which consisted of "talk to someone" or "loot something and read it" followed by running the instances that you'd be running at that level anyway.

What part of that is not applicable under "just plain tedious?"

Right, because those inconvenient but entirely-doable and not skill-related quests are such a great barrier.

If you never had a raid cancelled because one guy (or more) out of the 10/25 hadn't completed the attunement and one other (or more) guy left in a huff/AFK logged out/ragequit because they didn't want their own raid time wasted on a noob who couldn't be asked to attune themselves, you must have played a very different World of Warcraft than I.

And was your sentence supposed to be an argument in favor of attunements? I mean, if you were selling a bridge, I'd buy it.

If your sense of unity was wrecked by having to help a group member, then you're some pretty disunited people. Next time, recruit people who have done an instance before and stop poaching from lower-ranked guilds. The people you get doing that aren't known for their team spirit.

Nothing promotes unity like codependency.

As for the latter half of that paragraph, you have your cause-effect relationship backwards. Attunements encourage guild poaching by limiting skilled recruits to those who have said attunements completed... who are most likely people in lesser-progressed guilds. You know, the only people actually running that out-dated content to begin with.

Beside a few bits of scenery porn, games don't lend themselves to gratification that is quickly or easily gotten. There must be some barrier, because as in life, it is usually the anticipation that is the greatest.

Yeah, god only knows that the one thing MMOs need less of is timesinks. I keep telling everyone that you can instantly make MMO worlds 5% bigger by reducing movement speed to 95%, but the dummies keep making games like GW2 with their fancy teleports. That bankruptcy-in-waiting is going to feel like a playing in a thimble, I bet.

I understand what you mean by gratification, though. I only play games that are rationalized as being fun via cognitive dissonance after the fact. Games that are fun to play while playing? Total garbage. I'll take slowly metered fake fun over legitimate merriment any day.

Attunements are bad game design, and had zero to do with why the game had 9+ million subscribers (I mean, seriously, Doone?) - they punished newer players and older players alike, and where a ham-fisted attempt at gating + keeping outdated content relevant. And, as you say, they were inconvenient and had nothing to do with skill to boot.

There are better ways of demarcating or eliciting feelings of achievement... like with achievements, for example.

Another thing that contributed to the burnout of TBC-era attunements was role composition. An average DPS player had to run Trials of Naaru once and that was enough. A tank or healer, on other hand, had to run them over and over again to get all his guildmates attuned.

If you go to the original EU Forum Thread, you'll see the Blue dodge a very obvious question several posters asked:

how exactly are Attunements (let alone accountwide Attunements) more repetitive than Dailies and grinding points in three slightly-different versions of the same place time after time?

I don't have strong feelings either way - though Rossi illustrates why the game now has loot-pinnatas instead of actual Lairs to explore, thank you for killing virtual worlds - but that logical inconsistency was rather glaring.

BRD was not a level 60 instance in the beginning and dropped irrelevant loot (besides one part of the paladin or warrior D1 set). That was changed with a patch during vanilla that increased the mob level and loot to level 60 in BRD, because nobody run BRD before that.

I don't really get the hate for the Onyxia attunement. I did it back when I was a noob, not even knowing that it was needed to access a raid (or what raiding really was), and I thought that it was awesome. Yes, Jail Break was a bit crazy, but frankly I'd been trained for exactly these kinds of hijinks ever since wiping repeatedly while attempting to rescue Mr Keeshan in Redridge. With no phasing, it was fun to see people being startled by the Stormwind guards saluting me. I still have a screenshot of Prestor transforming in the throne room, a picture I shared even with some non-WoW-playing friends at the time because I thought it was just that cool. And later on I would always follow when I saw someone else doing the quest, just to help kick some dragonkin butt. But hey, too much work and nobody pays attention to the story anyway, right?

@Doone: From the numbers I've seen, WoW was growing pretty much constantly, only shrinking in Cata. Though given the relative importance of things, I doubt attunements are linked to any of that.

@Azuriel: I must have a different definition of tedious. Making me fly out of my way to go somewhere I'd otherwise not go and taking a ton of time (Rexxar) is what I'd call tedious. Starting a quest doesn't sound tedious, though if that's how you define it, MMOs must be miserable experiences.

I guess I've been lucky that guilds I've been in haven't been in the habit of starting raids without people ready to run them. Since we seem to be in the BC era, given the attunements, the concept of "out-dated content" is not as clear as since LK with the rolling raids.

Notice how this post has been about one-time things, not repeated? Getting into a place the first time can be rewarding. After that people tend to just want to be there. At no point did I bring up post-play rationalization. I think you may be slipping out reality.

@Ephemeron: That as a group problem, not one of attunements. The same could be applied to the need for gear, badges, reputation, etc.

@Kring: Okay.

@Shintar: Could you concede that the quest order for that chain was a bit strange?

> "Also, who the fuck is doing heroic raids where the "hoi polloi" are just wandering in? Do they not run with guilds, somehow being the sort of elitist who is inclusive enough for a PUG but not inclusive enough for a PUG? Sorry, but you seem to be making up imaginary people."

You misunderstand. The people doing heroic raids own ALL instances of those raids. If you are not a member of the Hardcore Raiding Club, you are basically trespassing, and probably also lowering the tone with your crappy 399 average item level, you hobo. Back to the LFR workhouse with you!

My complaint about attunements is that they've been too closely linked with raiding, instead of as a form of alternative advancement.

I liked karazhan attunement. You'd get to max level and then still have stuff to do that wasn't raiding. It also ensured a minimum skill level for kara pugs that kept everyone from getting stuck at moroes (that went away when it was just reduced to one person needing the key).

I'd prefer to have the attunements begin much earlier. You play through half the game learning how to play your class, hit max level, then you slowly unlock the other half, from solo, small group, raid, whatever. More to do at max level!

All those people who like to reminisce about when marathons used to be 26 miles of pain and slog are full of shit too. They were horrible grinds and wtf were the race organisers thinking?Nowadays it is much better. You can skip the first 25 miles of tedium and pain and simply run the last mile, and it's downhill too. None of that running up hills bullshit like in vanilla marathons.Yes,one-mile Marathons are the way to go. Anyone who says marathons were much better in the old days are idiots.

As it happens, getting my Onyxia attunement and getting my Dreadsteed were two of the highlights of valilla WoW for me. As for the qq about having to get attuned for Molten Core, ersiously, I got attuned and I didn't even know wtf Molten Core was - hardly difficult.

Attunements were for raiding. Normal players didn't need to grind them at all. For me they were a test. Are you prepared to spend weeks wiping on Vashj and Kaelthas? If so, then get through the damned attunements to prove it. Believe me, wiping on Kaelthas for the 100th time and listening to that tedious speech all over again was so much more of a PITA than having to go to Steamvaults one time for a lousy attunement.

@Klep: My point on subscriptions is that attunements were not the horror that many of these nostalgic-antiattunementists make it seem. My point is that the only unbiased perspective any of us can take on this is that the game *did not* suffer under the system of attunements. But I definitely agree there's a lot of reasons and theories to explore there to support the numbers.

Either way, the people who are looking back hating attunements are just as nostalgic as the ones looking back fondly. The haters do not see the hypocrisy of it. This is why attunements have to be judged on their own merit, not what any group of players *believed* it did to the game. Attunements have to be examined based on their function within gameplay and how successfully it achieved it.

And the fact is, attunements were wildly successful in fulfilling their functionality. NO ONE HAS EVER ARGUED ATTUNEMENTS WERE PERFECT. Improvement, in all facets of the game, are necessary and the system deserved some design attention to address it's flaws. But it's no more flawed than all the other systems of the game: repetitive dailies, leveling (which is the most unquestioned attunement in the game and the most used and the longest ever in gaming), hardmodes ...all of these are attunements (gating). The two sides of this disagreement choose to often to skip over all of this to console themselves about why they are right.

And whether any of us liked attunements or not, the fact is they were a great success and the game has, since getting rid of them, failed to institute adequate replacements. I'll make a follow up article on this to explore all the "whys". I hate hijacking comments sections with long replies :)

I actually really liked attunements - I actually had that BC chart that was in the WoWInsider post printed out on my wall, and I colored in each box as I finished it as a way of keeping track of what I still needed. I remember planning what I still needed and organizing Friday night runs with my friends to get someone their Dark Portal run-through or another Shadow Labs run for rep.

I was pretty damn proud when I got to put my Hand of A'dal title on and step into Hyjal. People value things more when they've worked hard for them. Just because the rogue with the piano-playing kid can only play in half-hour sessions, that doesn't mean that she has to be reduced to doing things that fit into a half-hour of gameplay - she can work towards her big goal in half-hour chunks, and will probably end up valuing the experience more.

Having a full-time professional job and running a business as well, I don't (and have never had during my 7 years of WoW) the same amount of time as other players might have, but that didn't stop me in Vanilla or BC and it wouldn't stop me now. Bring back the epic feeling! Bring back the attunements!

@Doone: Given that they've generally been upward until Cata, it's not possible to say what caused what. Maybe attunements caused a loss of one million players but draenei and blood elves each gained a million. All we can really say is that one single thing has not yet managed to kill WoW, despite the persistent prediction otherwise.

Don't worry about hijacking. If it is a problem I can always tell you to fuck off and delete them. :)

@Nazaniel: I'm not sure how it would work getting BT attunement in half-hour intervals. Perhaps switching in on KT for someone who doesn't need the kill? Not that I'm trying to argue with you, since I don't see the point in redesigning otherwise fun games to fit absurdly short schedules.

@Klep: the context of the upward trend is the success of the previous iteration. Players who hate BC can't be counted upon to buy Lich King. Bad hype from BC can't be counted upon to generate new sales for Lich King. This is how I'm looking at subs. To say that the trend downward began with Cataclysm, is to suggest that it was related to bad gameplay systems in Lich King. An upward trend in Lich king is suggestive of good gameplay systems in BC. Lich King was also the culmination of Warcraft 3 which cannot be downplayed, but the trend I'm pointing out remains in tact; the success of WC3 contributed to the high sales of Lich King.

That the trend is down with Cata is far more related to the quality of the game than it's age. In any case, as I've stated, I'm not attributing sub increases or losses solely to attunements, but pointing out that players overwhelming approved of the game as it was and thus it saw an increase in player approval, not a decrease. We can speculate all day about what that means, but we know for sure what it *does not* mean (attunements were hardly the evil these haters are making it).

@Doone: I think we'd see the previous expansion have a big impact on initial sales of the next expansion, but after the first few months it would be the quality of the current expansion keeping people subscribed and joining. In other words, if Cata initially had slow sales, then we can blame that on LK, but if later in, Cata is doing poorly, that would be the fault of Cata.

As I've seen the trends, initial box sales have been always been fast and it was only during Cataclysm that things slowed. That suggests something went wrong during Cataclysm. Other expansions may have had problems, but other improvements compensated for them.

Starting a quest doesn't sound tedious, though if that's how you define it, MMOs must be miserable experiences.

I consider something tedious when it acts as a barrier to some completely unrelated other thing. Having to shoot a free-throw before renewing your Driver's License, for example. Which has as much to do with killing raid bosses as talking to a quest-giver before being able to zone in.

I guess I've been lucky that guilds I've been in haven't been in the habit of starting raids without people ready to run them. Since we seem to be in the BC era, given the attunements, the concept of "out-dated content" is not as clear as since LK with the rolling raids.

Really? You have never been in a raid where the raid leader asks "Does everyone have the key?" and then everyone accepts the Kara summon and then endured the awkward silence that follows Bob saying "I can't get in the door"? Or being the guild MT and having to run the Kara attunement fifteen (15) times because the replacement(s) for your poached member(s) couldn't find a (successful) group for Shadow Labs?

You missed out, man. TBC was a blast in a feeder guild.

Notice how this post has been about one-time things, not repeated? Getting into a place the first time can be rewarding. After that people tend to just want to be there.

Notice how many steps of TBC attunements require a group?

Hell, if attunements were something that had to be completed solo (or at least could be) I would have zero problem with them. Sure, why not? Have one of the steps be "equip socketed, enchanted gear appropriate to your spec and deal 4000 DPS" and endgame WoW would be in a much better place.

Instead, we have the brilliant game designers of the 2007 world believing that progression should be based on arbitrary gating instead of "ability to kill boss." Or that forcing players to sit through lore commercials builds character. Or whatever nonsense was running through their TBC heads.

@Azuriel: What counts as related? Is leveling? Gear? Guild recruitment? What exactly is the definition of related in this context?

I don't remember running into that problem. I may have been sheltered by a guild that put a lot of emphasis on not doing stupid things that waste everyone's time. I think I ran into it in a PUG or two. As for Shadow Labyrinth, what exactly was so terrifyingly hard? Heroic, that was tricky, but regular? If you're recruiting people who cannot manage to finish SL and you're forcing your MT to run a place he doesn't want to go, since apparently no one else is able to tank, then your guild has problems far bigger than an attunement chain.

What does the group requirement have to do with any of what you just said, or what you quoted? I wasn't clear enough, so I'll elaborate: Getting over a hurdle and being rewarded for it is fun, whereas adding 5% to every FP does nothing. Adding 5% to the very first FP might very well be fun if it gives the opportunity to show something else along the way.

Solo attunements to raiding. Brilliant. What better way to get people into a cooperative attitude than to shove them off on their own?

I'm with you Klep, when I read the WoW insider article, I was incredibly annoyed with the writes outlook. The writer struck me as a lazy ass guy who would rather drive to his neighbors house instead of walking the hundred feet One of the many players who want instant gratification rather than having to work his ass off for it. Luckly I'm in Afghanistan and after reading it I got to call down an Atry strike with a couple thousand pounds of HE and seeing the boom helped curb my anger so ill go on a rant backing you up against many of my fellow commenter's.

What's interesting is so many people throw bitch fits about "not having new content" but it can be related to taking out things like long attunements. I remember spending days/weeks (depending on class and work load) after hitting 60/70 running the attunements and finishing off insanely long quest lines (and then helping out my fellow guild mates). It gave you something to do and tossed in a little lore which is never a bad thing. I played a paladin healer in BC and yes healers and tanks get placed into a roll of re running the same attunements over and over, but honestly what difference between these runs from spam running heroics now a days? At least you were helping someone progress, maybe even score a title, justice points, gems or hey... cause your being a nice person. Gods forbid you spent an hour of your day "wasting" your precious time helping someone. I have no sympathy for tanks and healers who bitch about being forced into running people through achievements.....if you wanna be specialized to a skill set that has no major involvement in a guild outside of stabbing the shit outta some giants ankles 3 nights a week, go roll a dps and enjoy the side lines. People roll tanks and healers BECAUSE they want to be involved. Just like I can't volunteer to serve in the military then whine about having to deploy overseas....it's my job. Just like it’s a tank/healers job to be the back bone of any guide/group. Most guilds had recruitment requirements stating they wouldn’t recruit a person unless they had a certain portion of an attunement already done.... if your guild website or moderators were to stupid to make that fact clear, then that’s a failure on your leaderships part.

What counts as related? Is leveling? Gear? Guild recruitment? What exactly is the definition of related in this context?

This is not a deep, philosophical question. What does questing have to do with raiding? Nothing, unless there are attunements. Leveling? Nothing, raiding wouldn't change if everyone was simply max level from the start. Gear? It provides a reason to keep killing the same bosses every week.

I don't remember running into that problem. I may have been sheltered by a guild that put a lot of emphasis on not doing stupid things that waste everyone's time.

Too bad attunements applied to everyone. Then they might have been a good idea!

As for Shadow Labyrinth, what exactly was so terrifyingly hard?

The Kara chain required heroic Shadow Labs. Most of the pugs I did on my alts never made it past the 2nd boss. Guild groups were better, of course, but seeing as how I was the guild MT, I ended up running that chain 15 times over the course of TBC.

Solo attunements to raiding. Brilliant. What better way to get people into a cooperative attitude than to shove them off on their own?

If you thought the Kara attunement et tal got people into a cooperative attitude, you are out of your mind. Nevermind how bizarre it is to suggest that a raiding guild needs cooperation priming before tackling Attumen.

@Hyperian

It gave you something to do and tossed in a little lore which is never a bad thing.

You can still have things to do that aren't attunements. Keep the Kara key questline, and have it reward something other than raid access at the end. Problem solved!

Most guilds had recruitment requirements stating they wouldn’t recruit a person unless they had a certain portion of an attunement already done.

Right, attunements institutionalized guild poaching. You have convinced me that it was a great idea!

Thank you for proving my point that you're mindlessly cherry-picking what is 'related'. Removing attunements and leveling would change raiding because they'd change the player experience and expectations leading into it, just as removing gear would change how people interact with raids. Raiding isn't an isolated activity. It takes place in the context of a game, with the rules of that game and the social dynamics of that game. It is not and never has been just a giant group of people trying to get loot. That would be incredibly lame.

"Too bad attunements applied to everyone. Then they might have been a good idea!"What do you mean by this? I don't understand at all what you're trying to say.

"The Kara chain required heroic Shadow Labs."The key fragment was available on either mode. You might be thinking of the TK attunement, which did.

"Most guilds had recruitment requirements stating they wouldn’t recruit a person unless they had a certain portion of an attunement already done."Leads you to conclude: "Right, attunements institutionalized guild poaching."How did an attunement that does not at all require a guild "institutionalize poaching"?

Azuriel, I think you may have lost your mind. You're rapidly descending into a realm of factless claims and illogical conclusions. I can't tell anymore if you have an actual point beyond beyond generalized unjustified hatred of attunements.

Just idly mentioning that Azuriel is not correct when he states that the Karazhan chain required heroic Shadow Labs. It didn't. You needed to run normal Steamvaults, The Arcatraz and Shadow Labs for the attunement, but not a single heroic instance. Sounds like you are confusing it with the Champion of the Naaru stuff which did indeed require a Murmur kill on heroic difficulty.

Back in TBC, I was trying to form a 10-man group in my little guild of casual players because I wanted to see Karazhan. Shaping my guildies into a raid group via the Karazhan attunement is one of the highlights of my WoW 'career'. I loved every moment of it. It ensured that people actually worked on the gear you required for early Kara by running instances and helped us work on our skills as a team. It was no painful slog, and I feel I grew as a player back then.

I never again felt such a sense of accomplishment as for when the ten of us first set foot into Karazhan, after having worked hard for it. I stopped raiding with this guild in Cataclysm, and we never were as tight-knit again as we were in TBC.

@ Azuriel Your right bud, cause my post specifically stated that every decent guild at that time were secretive shadowy men who roamed city to city with monocles and fiendish plans to steal players for their own benefit in the bid to take over the world. The majority of attunements did require people to team up (wild and crazy I know) and if that required one to spam in trade chat until all the little shattrath orphans ears bled, then start your engines.

One of the other "requirements" most guilds had is "what other guilds have you been in" if someone states 5-8 other guilds a smart person who assume the person is a guild hopper and would expect the same and ignore the dude. Wow players are in a sense permanent free agents, nothing to stop you from changing guilds. Unless we can change human greed guild hoppers will always occur, but to say that shadowy G men are always lurking behind every rock waiting to poach people with an attunement is a little much.

@ Kadomi I agree 100%, the quest chain is fun, involving, and it required only the patience to sit in Shatt for 5 mins looking for a 5 man run. I still run Kara each week, for gold, nostalgia and because I really dislike that A-hole "Big Bad Wolf" (and his creepy taunting voice still haunts my dreams) and I require his death. .

I wasn't around for Vanilla attunement days, but I was for the BC ones. I never found them HORRIBLE, HORRIFIC things that some people seem to remember them as, but I never found that they fostered some kind of amazing unity between my guildmates and me. At least, not anymore than running heroics or raids together did.

I have the good graces to be in a group as tightly-knit feeling now as I did back in BC, maybe a bit moreso since the 10 man group just feels more personal to me.

The main reason I felt a need to comment is the assumption in the post and some comments that ALL people moving up in terms of guild progression and are lacking an attunement have to be some kind of horrible person that ditched a guild that diligently geared and relied on them that only looked to move onto the next level of loot pinatas.

There are other reasons for "moving up" in guilds than just being an ass. Guilds can fall apart, less-than-fair GMs can choose to replace raiders with friends, over eager officers can recruit more raiders than really needed and have an overly full bench. All semi-common guild ailments! Those people needed attunement just as much as some jerk interested in gearing up and moving on.

Just felt like pointing out attunements didn't just hinder "entitled jerks hopping a guild the moment it slows down", but also decent folks who had bad circumstances in previous guilds and were trying to move up and on =P

Back in ye olden days when my guild fell apart on KT, and all my guildies went to new guilds or quit playing, I apped and got into an early BT/Hyjal raiding guild.

Not because I wanted to skip the fight (Which I actually loved, KT is still one of my favorite raid fights. "Free" Legendaries and all hell breaking loose? Sign me up), but because there were 2 guilds on server that were in late TK at the time and neither of them needed hunters. Downside of the big 25 man guilds, was there were fewer options for suddenly-guildless raiders.

And I know several handfuls of other people that something similar happened to, so I don't think it was THAT uncommon. Then again, Archimonde has always been low-to-medium pop, and we might have just had fewer guilds than many servers.